F1 Mania has continued to grip our household as Matthew frightens everybody else off the road - still loads of 10 grid penalties and disqualifications but we do now have a 12th and a 16th to our name. Matthew even got a pole position in qualifying but he had so many grid penalties he ended up back in 24th. Worse still, he has been relegated to HRT (Hispania Racing Team as opposed to Hormone Replacement Therapy) - the worse team on the grid.
The start of the week continued to be frantic with readers trying to get their books for Christmas though by Wednesday afternoon, things finally quietened down as readers became resigned to the fact that they may have left things abit too late for their Christmas books. Unfortunately we did get a small minority of readers who rang up to chase books that they had only ordered the day before and couldn't accept that Christmas does actually slow the post down. We also made sure that we cleared our in-tray ready for next year. Luckily the majority of the enquiries were just requests for print Talking Book lists. Unluckily, it was the week where it was the hunt for a photocopier that actually worked. I spent the majority of Wednesday having to keep dismantling the photocopier to rescue bits of paper that seem to get stuck in every place imagined.
The last few days gave me the opportunity to have a real good go at catching up with the customer requests. Claire Tomalin's biography on Charles Dickens has now fit 11 requests while we're gathering requests for Martina Cole's The Faithless as a rate of knots. More dilemma as ISIS will be doing this so we would have to buy this in.
We were going to have our Reader Services Team book selection meeting on Wednesday morning but thankfully we didn't get the infamous Mastersheet (list of titles to select from) back in time. Unfortunately, we're going to have to do it in the first week we're back. Something to look forward as it's the one thing that causes the most arguments in our Team. We also couldn't agree on what subject to have for collection development, one person wanted war but not WW1 or WW2, somebody else wanted black history while we had also received some feedback from a customer about the lack of books on Feminism in the library. We've gone for a compromise of picking 2 titles in each to start with and if we end up with a good pile, carry on for February. Fortunately it was quiet on Friday so I had a good attempt to look for some suitable titles. I also had a look in the old now defunct cassette library to see if there were some suitable titles for digitalisation and found some Andrea Dworkin and Germaine Greer in there. This job took longer than anticipated and it looks like I'm going to be continuing with this on my first day back at work.
Thursday 29 December 2011
Tuesday 20 December 2011
3 christmas dinners and a 10th grid penalty - December 12th-16th 2011
A week after Matthew's birthday and the F1 game is still going strong. He has signed for Force India and there was huge excitement when he reached the dizzy heights of 19th on one of the qualifying sessions but it's been a week of 10 grid place penalties, disqualifications and a consistent 24th.
It's also been a succession of Christmas dinners with my Book Club's meal kicking off the proceedings - a decent helping of mussels and french fries at the Beehive, followed by a traditional roast the next day at my son's school(in my role as parent governor) and rounded off with fishcakes and salad for our Team meal out at the cuckoo. I'm going to go on a strict diet next week ready for Christmas.
We were supposed to have talked about Precious Bane for our Bookclub but only 2 people had managed to finish the book with not many good things to say. I read the first paragraph and decided that life was too short to decipher the Shropshire accent and left it. Definitely wins the award for the most unpopular book we've had, beating Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian which previously held this dubious record.
Workwise it's been a week dominated by New Books, RNIB's bimonthly magazine advertising the new titles in the library. Everyone has a section which they are responsible for - from running a report for their format for the last 2 months and then editing it to a set format. This isn't just for consistency and to make it professional but also to take into account that the magazine is produced in different formats. For example, to make the daisy version navigatable, we have to set the text out using different formats.
My role is to pull all the sections together and proof read it across the formats including checking the formatting, consistency and adding missing information. It's been a tighter deadline than usual so have found that a copy seems to be constantly at my side.
The calls for extra Christmas books still keep coming in. I've also had a string of wholesale changes to reader's lists. I'm guessing that as people begin to get more dependent on their books over the winter months, they are becoming more discerning on what they read. It can be a lengthy process, particularly if they're really specific in their taste and worse still, they've read everything we have to offer. The calls for Claire Tomalin's biography keep coming in, definitely need to select this next time around though there is a dilemma that Audiogo may pick this up and we may have to wait for this to come out as an Import.
We've managed to acquire noticeboard space in a prime spot near the canteen for a few months. This has given us a good and easy opportunity to promote the Reader Services Team. Last month, we had new films/TV drama tie-in's to books where we had some good titles available in alternative format including The Slap, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Help.
Last week we decided on books with a Christmas theme, my 2 books were Tolkien's Letters to Santa and Fannie Flagg's - A Redbird Christmas. We're taking it in turns to do the final display, my colleague went to town with loads of Christmas images to give the display a Christmassy finishing touch. It's my turn next month and we're talking about doing a display advertising our Bookclub as we're getting short of participants. I'm already getting my thoughts together.
It's also been a succession of Christmas dinners with my Book Club's meal kicking off the proceedings - a decent helping of mussels and french fries at the Beehive, followed by a traditional roast the next day at my son's school(in my role as parent governor) and rounded off with fishcakes and salad for our Team meal out at the cuckoo. I'm going to go on a strict diet next week ready for Christmas.
We were supposed to have talked about Precious Bane for our Bookclub but only 2 people had managed to finish the book with not many good things to say. I read the first paragraph and decided that life was too short to decipher the Shropshire accent and left it. Definitely wins the award for the most unpopular book we've had, beating Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian which previously held this dubious record.
Workwise it's been a week dominated by New Books, RNIB's bimonthly magazine advertising the new titles in the library. Everyone has a section which they are responsible for - from running a report for their format for the last 2 months and then editing it to a set format. This isn't just for consistency and to make it professional but also to take into account that the magazine is produced in different formats. For example, to make the daisy version navigatable, we have to set the text out using different formats.
My role is to pull all the sections together and proof read it across the formats including checking the formatting, consistency and adding missing information. It's been a tighter deadline than usual so have found that a copy seems to be constantly at my side.
The calls for extra Christmas books still keep coming in. I've also had a string of wholesale changes to reader's lists. I'm guessing that as people begin to get more dependent on their books over the winter months, they are becoming more discerning on what they read. It can be a lengthy process, particularly if they're really specific in their taste and worse still, they've read everything we have to offer. The calls for Claire Tomalin's biography keep coming in, definitely need to select this next time around though there is a dilemma that Audiogo may pick this up and we may have to wait for this to come out as an Import.
We've managed to acquire noticeboard space in a prime spot near the canteen for a few months. This has given us a good and easy opportunity to promote the Reader Services Team. Last month, we had new films/TV drama tie-in's to books where we had some good titles available in alternative format including The Slap, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Help.
Last week we decided on books with a Christmas theme, my 2 books were Tolkien's Letters to Santa and Fannie Flagg's - A Redbird Christmas. We're taking it in turns to do the final display, my colleague went to town with loads of Christmas images to give the display a Christmassy finishing touch. It's my turn next month and we're talking about doing a display advertising our Bookclub as we're getting short of participants. I'm already getting my thoughts together.
Saturday 17 December 2011
Pizza, Cake and A Tiny Bit Marvellous - Dec 5th-9th 2011
Well it's week 2 of my week at work blog, (though a week late!) and the phones have been intensive, with the cold weather and Christmas holidays looming, the winter readers have arrived en masse. Fortunately for me it's been a 4 day week so some respite. It was my son's 13th birthday so in amongst the mass Christmas card writing and wrapping presents, I've had a sleepover and birthday food to contend with. I'm a "domestic ungoddess" where cooking and housework is concerned, that's why I'm better off at work! As usual disaster struck and I forgot to separate my egg yolks in my ice cream, my home made pizza ended up in a sea of liquid, my chocolate icing swam off my cake and my crumble topping swapped places with my rhubharb! The boys didn't kill each other and ate the food though so I call that a success.
We're mastering the world of the F1 computer game where it's a miracle if anybody finishs a lap yet alone a race and we haven't moved above 24th. The good thing is that we all like taking it in turns to be Vettel so it's sweet revenge to see him last, unable to stay on the track and black flagged in most of the races.
Back to work matters, top topics this week still seem to be mass ordering from New Books and sorting themselves extra books for Christmas. I've been making sure that I've asked each reader if they need extra books over the holidays and it's surprising how many readers hadn't realised about the extra books and it's like Christmas has come early for some of them!
I've also spent abit of time catching up with the customer requests and it's always interesting to see which titles come up each month. We get approximately 150-200 requests a month and while some titles are pretty obscure, out-of-print or very expensive to purchase, there has been some real gems that have slipped through the net over the years. I guess this isn't so surprising given the small allocation we have each month (currently 41 new titles and 16 imports) with customer requests taking a good proportion of these once we start including missing series, retranscription requests and collection development into account. It's not an easy job as we are catering for a diverse taste, for example, this month's requests that have hit the magic "3" requests have ranged from Susan Boyle's autobiography to Jan Morris's Britannica Pax Trilogy and Dawn French's A Tiny Bit Marvellous to Melvyn Bragg's Credo.
We can always tell which books are being heavily plugged, particularly Radio 4, requests for Claire Tomalin's biography on Dickens keeps cropping up all over the place. Other books that recently caught the readers' imagination were Vasily Grossman's Love and Fate and Edmund de Waal's The Hare with the Amber Eyes.
I also spent some time going through a batch of recent booksellers and Saturday Guardian's to get a nice long list of suggestions for future Talking Books. It's one of those jobs where I don't mind doing in the evenings and as well as keeping abrest of what's happening in the book world, there's some good articles about public libraries with current issues being library closures and libraries lending e-books.
We're mastering the world of the F1 computer game where it's a miracle if anybody finishs a lap yet alone a race and we haven't moved above 24th. The good thing is that we all like taking it in turns to be Vettel so it's sweet revenge to see him last, unable to stay on the track and black flagged in most of the races.
Back to work matters, top topics this week still seem to be mass ordering from New Books and sorting themselves extra books for Christmas. I've been making sure that I've asked each reader if they need extra books over the holidays and it's surprising how many readers hadn't realised about the extra books and it's like Christmas has come early for some of them!
I've also spent abit of time catching up with the customer requests and it's always interesting to see which titles come up each month. We get approximately 150-200 requests a month and while some titles are pretty obscure, out-of-print or very expensive to purchase, there has been some real gems that have slipped through the net over the years. I guess this isn't so surprising given the small allocation we have each month (currently 41 new titles and 16 imports) with customer requests taking a good proportion of these once we start including missing series, retranscription requests and collection development into account. It's not an easy job as we are catering for a diverse taste, for example, this month's requests that have hit the magic "3" requests have ranged from Susan Boyle's autobiography to Jan Morris's Britannica Pax Trilogy and Dawn French's A Tiny Bit Marvellous to Melvyn Bragg's Credo.
We can always tell which books are being heavily plugged, particularly Radio 4, requests for Claire Tomalin's biography on Dickens keeps cropping up all over the place. Other books that recently caught the readers' imagination were Vasily Grossman's Love and Fate and Edmund de Waal's The Hare with the Amber Eyes.
I also spent some time going through a batch of recent booksellers and Saturday Guardian's to get a nice long list of suggestions for future Talking Books. It's one of those jobs where I don't mind doing in the evenings and as well as keeping abrest of what's happening in the book world, there's some good articles about public libraries with current issues being library closures and libraries lending e-books.
Monday 5 December 2011
1984, Reading-4-life, I've finally got started - Nov 28th-Dec 2nd 2011
At last, I've finally got a chance to write on my blog (a month later than planned) as I've spent alot of time helping my son set his own blog up about his hens.
I wanted to get in to the habit of blogging on a weekly basis about my previous week at work for a number of reasons. Firstly, it will be a chance to reflect on my work while secondly, it will give people an idea of working in a library, albeit slightly an unconventional one. Also I just like writing.
The phones were pretty constant, dealing with phone enquiries takes up the majority of my time. The popular calls have been readers ordering extra books for Christmas, such as the faith of the postal service, and ordering from the latest issue of the 2 library magazines - Read On (particularly from the article about Scandinavian Crime authors) and New Books. New Books is particularly interesting as the Team can see which titles are appearing to be the most popular which is useful as I'm involved in book selection and it gives us an indication if we're getting it right. I also seem to have a run where I feel like I'm dealing with the same enquiry - a feeling of deja vu. Last week I had a run of people wanting authors who write like Catherine Cookson where I find myself going round the UK and reeling off the authors as I reach each city in turn, golden age crime authors and British TV crime authors. I did volunteer to contribute to the next issue of the Who writes like book but they were overrun with volunteers so I missed out.
Another job that takes up another large chunk of my week is managing the customer requests where we get 150-200 suggestions a month. I circulated last month's requests to all of the Team to vote on them. The ones that reach a certain amount of votes then go on to the "MasterSheet" - the spreadsheet we use each month for book selection. Unfortunately due to various reasons I only had 5 out of 8 people voting and to make matters worst, we all voted for completely different titles! I finally managed to narrow it down to a final 15 suggestions, an eclectic mix as well from Waiting to exhale - Terry McMillan, a misery memoir from Cupcake Brown, autobiographies by Ray Charles and Andy Kershaw, Pure by Andrew Miller, a much needed up-to-date suggestion on NLP and some old favourites such as Audrey Howard and Minette Walters.
Last week also saw our 6 weekly stock familiarisation meeting where we read something in a given genre or explore authors that we wouldn't normally read ourselves but we find ourselves constantly putting them on readers' lists. If you're advising readers about books, you need to not only know your stock but also be knowledgeable about the genres and authors themselves. It was Political Fiction's turn to be explored and a good selection of titles were covered including Alan Furst (Spies of the Balkans), Michael Dobbs (House of Cards), Ian McEwan (Amsterdam), Robert Harris (Fatherland) and George Orwell (1984) which was my offering. I quite like political fiction myself though 1 or 2 of my colleagues weren't looking forward to this. They were pleasantly surprised, the biggest one coming from Alan Furst where he turned out to be more literary than expected and was described as beautifully written. The least liked was Amsterdam which was described as shallow with unlikeable characters. I quite enjoyed 1984 myself as it made me think and there was an element of truth in it though most people had been put off this as they had to read it for school. It was bleak and relentless though, abit like Cormac McCartney's The Road.
As it is supposed to be technically quieter at this time of the year, there's a mass attempt to update our Talking Book genre/subject lists of selected titles which we send out to customers. I worked on the new War list which covers both fiction and factual titles (100 of each). It looks a good mix and includes the manly war authors like Douglas Reeman, Leslie Thomas and Patrick Robinson to family books set in the war like Elizabeth Elgin, Lilian Harry and R F Delderfield - An avenue goes to war. I've also tried to cover a mixture of wars from Bernard Cornwell's Azincourt to Karl Marlantes - Matterhorn. Non fiction also goes across the board from Crimean to Afghanistan, Boer War to the Falklands though the 2WW dominates as this is the one that mainly gets requested as a lot of our readers were actively involved in it.
I also finally finished my report on a recent course I attended in Derby called Reading 4 Life, ran by CILIP East Midlands Group. It was a chance to see the different reader development activities going on in the public libraries and to see if any of these were feasible and could be adapted for ourselves. I thought the most usable one was the Northamptonshire Libraries “Guiding Lights” - how books can change a person’s life. Leicester City - Health Day/Libraries are good for your health also looked promising for ourselves to adapt.
The course also covered a couple of workshops - Using Social Media and Talking about books. Again, there were a few ideas in the Using Social Media course that we could develop there. Derbyshire Reading Detectives Blog looked at literature written about the area by authors in that area. Particularly interesting was that alot of these authors have never been published so the blog had provided an avenue to get their work exposed. We get alot of readers sending in their unpublished material in the hope that we will put it in the Talking book Library. Maybe we could have a blog which promoted their work instead.
Westminster Libraries was also recommended as having a good blog. I liked their idea of an advent calendar of books (a bit late to set up this year) and getting their staff's children or members of their family to recommend books.
We've also had some posters of various initiatives from various library authorities emailed afterwards. North Kesteven had a food festival linked in with books, perhaps we could do a World Book Day event and link it in with a world food festival.
I wanted to get in to the habit of blogging on a weekly basis about my previous week at work for a number of reasons. Firstly, it will be a chance to reflect on my work while secondly, it will give people an idea of working in a library, albeit slightly an unconventional one. Also I just like writing.
The phones were pretty constant, dealing with phone enquiries takes up the majority of my time. The popular calls have been readers ordering extra books for Christmas, such as the faith of the postal service, and ordering from the latest issue of the 2 library magazines - Read On (particularly from the article about Scandinavian Crime authors) and New Books. New Books is particularly interesting as the Team can see which titles are appearing to be the most popular which is useful as I'm involved in book selection and it gives us an indication if we're getting it right. I also seem to have a run where I feel like I'm dealing with the same enquiry - a feeling of deja vu. Last week I had a run of people wanting authors who write like Catherine Cookson where I find myself going round the UK and reeling off the authors as I reach each city in turn, golden age crime authors and British TV crime authors. I did volunteer to contribute to the next issue of the Who writes like book but they were overrun with volunteers so I missed out.
Another job that takes up another large chunk of my week is managing the customer requests where we get 150-200 suggestions a month. I circulated last month's requests to all of the Team to vote on them. The ones that reach a certain amount of votes then go on to the "MasterSheet" - the spreadsheet we use each month for book selection. Unfortunately due to various reasons I only had 5 out of 8 people voting and to make matters worst, we all voted for completely different titles! I finally managed to narrow it down to a final 15 suggestions, an eclectic mix as well from Waiting to exhale - Terry McMillan, a misery memoir from Cupcake Brown, autobiographies by Ray Charles and Andy Kershaw, Pure by Andrew Miller, a much needed up-to-date suggestion on NLP and some old favourites such as Audrey Howard and Minette Walters.
Last week also saw our 6 weekly stock familiarisation meeting where we read something in a given genre or explore authors that we wouldn't normally read ourselves but we find ourselves constantly putting them on readers' lists. If you're advising readers about books, you need to not only know your stock but also be knowledgeable about the genres and authors themselves. It was Political Fiction's turn to be explored and a good selection of titles were covered including Alan Furst (Spies of the Balkans), Michael Dobbs (House of Cards), Ian McEwan (Amsterdam), Robert Harris (Fatherland) and George Orwell (1984) which was my offering. I quite like political fiction myself though 1 or 2 of my colleagues weren't looking forward to this. They were pleasantly surprised, the biggest one coming from Alan Furst where he turned out to be more literary than expected and was described as beautifully written. The least liked was Amsterdam which was described as shallow with unlikeable characters. I quite enjoyed 1984 myself as it made me think and there was an element of truth in it though most people had been put off this as they had to read it for school. It was bleak and relentless though, abit like Cormac McCartney's The Road.
As it is supposed to be technically quieter at this time of the year, there's a mass attempt to update our Talking Book genre/subject lists of selected titles which we send out to customers. I worked on the new War list which covers both fiction and factual titles (100 of each). It looks a good mix and includes the manly war authors like Douglas Reeman, Leslie Thomas and Patrick Robinson to family books set in the war like Elizabeth Elgin, Lilian Harry and R F Delderfield - An avenue goes to war. I've also tried to cover a mixture of wars from Bernard Cornwell's Azincourt to Karl Marlantes - Matterhorn. Non fiction also goes across the board from Crimean to Afghanistan, Boer War to the Falklands though the 2WW dominates as this is the one that mainly gets requested as a lot of our readers were actively involved in it.
I also finally finished my report on a recent course I attended in Derby called Reading 4 Life, ran by CILIP East Midlands Group. It was a chance to see the different reader development activities going on in the public libraries and to see if any of these were feasible and could be adapted for ourselves. I thought the most usable one was the Northamptonshire Libraries “Guiding Lights” - how books can change a person’s life. Leicester City - Health Day/Libraries are good for your health also looked promising for ourselves to adapt.
The course also covered a couple of workshops - Using Social Media and Talking about books. Again, there were a few ideas in the Using Social Media course that we could develop there. Derbyshire Reading Detectives Blog looked at literature written about the area by authors in that area. Particularly interesting was that alot of these authors have never been published so the blog had provided an avenue to get their work exposed. We get alot of readers sending in their unpublished material in the hope that we will put it in the Talking book Library. Maybe we could have a blog which promoted their work instead.
Westminster Libraries was also recommended as having a good blog. I liked their idea of an advent calendar of books (a bit late to set up this year) and getting their staff's children or members of their family to recommend books.
We've also had some posters of various initiatives from various library authorities emailed afterwards. North Kesteven had a food festival linked in with books, perhaps we could do a World Book Day event and link it in with a world food festival.
Monday 28 November 2011
Crazy about chickens - my life after 23 steps
So much for continuing my blog on a regular basis after 23 steps, I've not had a chance to touch it. Instead I've been helping my 12 year son set up his own blog about his chickens. He isn't very keen on writing normally but the idea of writing about his hens and posting pictures of his hens on the web for the world to see has captured his imagination. We're posting blogs on a regular basis and constantly redesigning his page to add more gadgets. I've actually gone back and added a few extras to my site and have learnt a few new things like adding photos to postings. We did try to add a video clip but it kept failing so any suggestions on how to get this to work will be very welcome.
My son's website is http://mattcrazyaboutchickens-jane.blogspot.com/
My son's website is http://mattcrazyaboutchickens-jane.blogspot.com/
Sunday 30 October 2011
Thing 23 - I've finally made it
I’ve finally made it though there were times I thought I might just quietly stop and hope nobody would notice.
My professional development plan reads more like a To-do list for next year and I've decided to split it into a more manageable 3 categories - Essential/Time-specific, Realistic/Achievable and Nice to do if have the opportunity.
Essential/Time-specific
Continue with revalidation
Find mentor
Realistic/Achievable
Carry on with blog - ie Revalidation and general work
Improve my blog
Continue to tweet
Improve my LinkedIn Account
Contribute to online library discussions
Contribute to a “library day in a working life project” wiki
Continue with CSG committee
Try to participate in a CPD activity each month
Nice to do if have the opportunity
Investigate online course on podcasts mentioned in one of the 23 Things
Look into Prezi and Slideshare
Get involved in advocacy work
Organise a library event
Do some voluntary work or job shadowing
Try to get involved in some project or extra activity at work
I also did a SWOT analysis and came up with the following:-
Strengths
Currently have a library job
Professional development is encouraged
I'm chartered
Don’t mind which library sector I work for
Always keen to look for opportunities to widen skills and develop professional awareness
Weaknesses
Very little opportunity to do professional work in current job
Quality and depth of my professional library experience is limited
Not skilled enough for a lot of the library jobs on offer - can stretch it to get to the interview stage but interviewers can soon find the gaps
Can’t move to a different area in the country to find work, tied to the East Midlands
Opportunities
Being made redundant may offer opportunities including voluntary work
Nearly paid off mortgage so may be able to consider part time work in the future
Threats
Job isn’t very stable
Wider economy - lack of library opportunities in general
Getting too old
My professional development plan reads more like a To-do list for next year and I've decided to split it into a more manageable 3 categories - Essential/Time-specific, Realistic/Achievable and Nice to do if have the opportunity.
Essential/Time-specific
Continue with revalidation
Find mentor
Realistic/Achievable
Carry on with blog - ie Revalidation and general work
Improve my blog
Continue to tweet
Improve my LinkedIn Account
Contribute to online library discussions
Contribute to a “library day in a working life project” wiki
Continue with CSG committee
Try to participate in a CPD activity each month
Nice to do if have the opportunity
Investigate online course on podcasts mentioned in one of the 23 Things
Look into Prezi and Slideshare
Get involved in advocacy work
Organise a library event
Do some voluntary work or job shadowing
Try to get involved in some project or extra activity at work
I also did a SWOT analysis and came up with the following:-
Strengths
Currently have a library job
Professional development is encouraged
I'm chartered
Don’t mind which library sector I work for
Always keen to look for opportunities to widen skills and develop professional awareness
Weaknesses
Very little opportunity to do professional work in current job
Quality and depth of my professional library experience is limited
Not skilled enough for a lot of the library jobs on offer - can stretch it to get to the interview stage but interviewers can soon find the gaps
Can’t move to a different area in the country to find work, tied to the East Midlands
Opportunities
Being made redundant may offer opportunities including voluntary work
Nearly paid off mortgage so may be able to consider part time work in the future
Threats
Job isn’t very stable
Wider economy - lack of library opportunities in general
Getting too old
Tuesday 25 October 2011
Thing 22 - Volunteering
I have volunteered in the past to get the necessary library experience before I applied to go to library school. I tried to apply for library jobs but was unsuccessful as I didn't have any relevant experience so voluntary work was the other alternative. It was quite hard finding a voluntary placement at the time and I ended up writing to several libraries in the East Midlands before I was offered an initial 6 week placement with Gedling Libraries. This gave me a good insight into not only the role of the Community Librarian but also experience across the board - from working on a busy reference desk/local history area at Arnold Library to general library duties (I had no experience whatsoever in the library so everything was a plus). I continued to volunteer at Carlton Library on Tuesday evenings and Saturday mornings which benefitted everybody as not only did I gain additional experience, there was an extra pair of hands helping at the busy Saturday morning counter and my quick typing skills meant that I gained the job of typing out the overdues on Tuesday evenings (it was pre-computer days).
I think this stood me in good step to gain a bursary, in addition to having a good degree. I also think I may have struggled with some aspects of the course if I hadn't done the voluntary work and not seen some of the library work in practice.
I also did voluntary work again after I finished my course to try and boost my experience as I found that I still didn't really have enough experience to get a library job straight away. This time, it was Mencap and Dial (UK). I think this experience helped me to get the job at the RNIB rather than my paid work at the FE Colleges.
I have also put on my list of things to do a small stint of volunteering next year ie perhaps 1 day a week for a month, particularly if I have enough holidays saved up to use. It's something that I'm going to look into and see what options are available as it's a way of developing new skills, making new contacts and also just getting a chance to work in a different library sector. I will certainly volunteer again if I'm made redundant from my current post.
Volunteering should be something that benefits both parties, unfortunately I've seen people being made redundant and then a few months later, volunteers are doing that same work. It's that abuse that gives volunteers (and also temporary staff) a bad name.
I think this stood me in good step to gain a bursary, in addition to having a good degree. I also think I may have struggled with some aspects of the course if I hadn't done the voluntary work and not seen some of the library work in practice.
I also did voluntary work again after I finished my course to try and boost my experience as I found that I still didn't really have enough experience to get a library job straight away. This time, it was Mencap and Dial (UK). I think this experience helped me to get the job at the RNIB rather than my paid work at the FE Colleges.
I have also put on my list of things to do a small stint of volunteering next year ie perhaps 1 day a week for a month, particularly if I have enough holidays saved up to use. It's something that I'm going to look into and see what options are available as it's a way of developing new skills, making new contacts and also just getting a chance to work in a different library sector. I will certainly volunteer again if I'm made redundant from my current post.
Volunteering should be something that benefits both parties, unfortunately I've seen people being made redundant and then a few months later, volunteers are doing that same work. It's that abuse that gives volunteers (and also temporary staff) a bad name.
Sunday 23 October 2011
Thing 21 Job applications and interviews
CVs
I have got a CV as when we went into consultation last year, we were offered a couple of hours advice on how to draw up CVs with an Employment Consultant. I've actually ended up doing 2 CV's - one that's library based and the other one for standard office jobs. The consultant also focussed on my skills that could be transferred into other jobs, mainly frontline customer services or admin rather than library work.
On the positive side, my CV is nicely set out with bullet-points making it easy to read. Unfortunately, I struggled with the listing of achievements and strengths etc as I'm just no good at self-promoting myself and identifying anything I can boast about (Probably something to do with the English psyche).
I did however come up with an irrelvelant list of positives which include:-
I'm never ill, bugs avoid me.
I have a knack of being able to get to work daily despite living over 40 miles away and not being able to drive.
I make very good chocolate truffles.
I'm a good waitress.
I have a photographic audio memory for voices and conversations which means that I have an uncanny knack of remembering customers and can impress them greatly (or scare them slightly!) by recalling conversations ie books they've ordered from months or sometimes years gone by! I'm not sure how I can translate this skill to other jobs!
As I'm out the house for 12 hours a day, I'm good at squashing in as many things as possible in the few hours I have free.
Also, probably also to do with that British psyche, my work colleagues aren't forthcoming with positive comments either so it's hard to judge yourself. However going on customer comments, I usually get the following:-
"Oh good.....a cheery voice" or "You sound nice and cheery".
"You're very patient to deal/cope with me".
"How did you remember that?" or "You know me don't you".
"I didn't think you're find that" or "you know your books/stuff".
And my favourite which was said only last week by an ex-Librarian "You're a good librarian".
Maybe I should just put their comments on my CV instead.
Job applications and Interviews
I haven't applied for any jobs lately but in the past, I'm not too bad in getting to the interview stage. I tend to write too much in applications though and tend to go over the top in giving evidence for essentials and desirables. Unfortuantely, I tend to blow it in the interview - I either fluff a question or say something inane and talk myself out the job. I did also used to think that I was just there to make up the numbers until I did a spot of recruiting and interviewing myself and realised that you have to meet the criteria before you're interviewed and are quite happy to interview just 2 people if people haven't scored the necessary points.
However I did go for an interview once where the interviewer confessed that I was called to the interview because he was curious to see who was behind the handwriting. When I write neatly in capital letters, my applciations tend to resemble more like ancient Greek manuscripts. I think he was expecting some Plato figure coming through the door dressed in white robes and with long hair and a beard!
I have got a CV as when we went into consultation last year, we were offered a couple of hours advice on how to draw up CVs with an Employment Consultant. I've actually ended up doing 2 CV's - one that's library based and the other one for standard office jobs. The consultant also focussed on my skills that could be transferred into other jobs, mainly frontline customer services or admin rather than library work.
On the positive side, my CV is nicely set out with bullet-points making it easy to read. Unfortunately, I struggled with the listing of achievements and strengths etc as I'm just no good at self-promoting myself and identifying anything I can boast about (Probably something to do with the English psyche).
I did however come up with an irrelvelant list of positives which include:-
I'm never ill, bugs avoid me.
I have a knack of being able to get to work daily despite living over 40 miles away and not being able to drive.
I make very good chocolate truffles.
I'm a good waitress.
I have a photographic audio memory for voices and conversations which means that I have an uncanny knack of remembering customers and can impress them greatly (or scare them slightly!) by recalling conversations ie books they've ordered from months or sometimes years gone by! I'm not sure how I can translate this skill to other jobs!
As I'm out the house for 12 hours a day, I'm good at squashing in as many things as possible in the few hours I have free.
Also, probably also to do with that British psyche, my work colleagues aren't forthcoming with positive comments either so it's hard to judge yourself. However going on customer comments, I usually get the following:-
"Oh good.....a cheery voice" or "You sound nice and cheery".
"You're very patient to deal/cope with me".
"How did you remember that?" or "You know me don't you".
"I didn't think you're find that" or "you know your books/stuff".
And my favourite which was said only last week by an ex-Librarian "You're a good librarian".
Maybe I should just put their comments on my CV instead.
Job applications and Interviews
I haven't applied for any jobs lately but in the past, I'm not too bad in getting to the interview stage. I tend to write too much in applications though and tend to go over the top in giving evidence for essentials and desirables. Unfortuantely, I tend to blow it in the interview - I either fluff a question or say something inane and talk myself out the job. I did also used to think that I was just there to make up the numbers until I did a spot of recruiting and interviewing myself and realised that you have to meet the criteria before you're interviewed and are quite happy to interview just 2 people if people haven't scored the necessary points.
However I did go for an interview once where the interviewer confessed that I was called to the interview because he was curious to see who was behind the handwriting. When I write neatly in capital letters, my applciations tend to resemble more like ancient Greek manuscripts. I think he was expecting some Plato figure coming through the door dressed in white robes and with long hair and a beard!
Saturday 15 October 2011
Return of Holly and Cat and Thing 17 - Prezi and Slideshare
It seems like an age when I last posted something on my blog. The new school term has meant the start of governors meetings again along with various bugs coming home from school with both of the not so fairer sex going down with man flu and having to be nursed for 2 weeks and counting, it seems like an eternity.
I did manage to have a Friday off and I suppose I should have caught up then but the time I took the dog out for an extra long walk (over 2 hours) as he had lost out on his walks due to the man flu and then I spent about 3 hours catching up with my revalidation as this had fallen behind, my day had practically gone. I treated my revalidation to a box file and some nice plastic folders so sorting out all my bits for my portfolio will be my next job.
This last week saw an epic brandy chocolate truffle making venture most evenings for our cake stall which formed the part of a Read for RNIB fund-raising week. "Mr Darcy Delights" - creamy and smooth and melts in your mouth - turned out to be not as popular as "Heathcliff's Heavens" - dark and delicious and a bit rough and ready. (owing in part to the odd bumpy shape as 85% dark chocolate doesn't roll very well!)
We also had a week-long book sale, quiz, guess the first lines and raffle while one of our Team did some readings about love Friday dinner. We managed to raise nearly £220 altogether.
I was going to take part in the cpd23 online chat but I didn't get home until after 7.00 and then we had some unexpected visitors so had to do a "superman" job on the house to make it look respectable as it looks a bit rough by the end of the week.
So what can I say about Prezi. I haven't come across this before and I don't think it will be something that I would ever use in my job. I had a look at the various presentations but I haven't attempted to do one myself. It's effective to a point but it got irritating at the end with the continuous homing in and out. I lost the will to live. It's good to know that it exists and it's something that I might have a go with at a later date though I think it's something that had to be used with care.
Slideshare is another thing that I've not come across before and again, I can't see that I will be using it at the moment. I did Powerpoint in my ECDL which covered doing slide shows but that's the nearest thing. Again, I may relook at this at a later date.
I did manage to have a Friday off and I suppose I should have caught up then but the time I took the dog out for an extra long walk (over 2 hours) as he had lost out on his walks due to the man flu and then I spent about 3 hours catching up with my revalidation as this had fallen behind, my day had practically gone. I treated my revalidation to a box file and some nice plastic folders so sorting out all my bits for my portfolio will be my next job.
This last week saw an epic brandy chocolate truffle making venture most evenings for our cake stall which formed the part of a Read for RNIB fund-raising week. "Mr Darcy Delights" - creamy and smooth and melts in your mouth - turned out to be not as popular as "Heathcliff's Heavens" - dark and delicious and a bit rough and ready. (owing in part to the odd bumpy shape as 85% dark chocolate doesn't roll very well!)
We also had a week-long book sale, quiz, guess the first lines and raffle while one of our Team did some readings about love Friday dinner. We managed to raise nearly £220 altogether.
I was going to take part in the cpd23 online chat but I didn't get home until after 7.00 and then we had some unexpected visitors so had to do a "superman" job on the house to make it look respectable as it looks a bit rough by the end of the week.
So what can I say about Prezi. I haven't come across this before and I don't think it will be something that I would ever use in my job. I had a look at the various presentations but I haven't attempted to do one myself. It's effective to a point but it got irritating at the end with the continuous homing in and out. I lost the will to live. It's good to know that it exists and it's something that I might have a go with at a later date though I think it's something that had to be used with care.
Slideshare is another thing that I've not come across before and again, I can't see that I will be using it at the moment. I did Powerpoint in my ECDL which covered doing slide shows but that's the nearest thing. Again, I may relook at this at a later date.
Monday 3 October 2011
Thing 20 - The Library Routes Project
I know I'm trying to avoid doing Thing 17 as it looks complicated and Thing 20 looks the easier option, partly because I blogged my route in Thing 10. I took the plunge of adding my link to the wiki though took several minutes in deciding whether to use my own name or a pseudo name, then several more minutes in working out how to edit the wiki as my page view was different to the instructions! Found a useful tip on the page - to just copy and paste the previous entry and typing your details instead and then lost my entry when trying to preview my handiwork and again when I missed the question you had to answer to avoid spam (not the pink meat variety I hope). Maybe I should had tackled Prezi after all.
Looking at the other links, half of the blogs seem to be the same as me - started late (took my dog) in life and fell into Librarianship after doing Degrees that lead to nowhere and ended up doing voluntary work to gain experience. The other half seem to know exactly what they wanted to do when they were still at school, got a library job at a very early age or some kind of experience while still at school and then went on to study part-time or via distance learning.
Looking at the other links, half of the blogs seem to be the same as me - started late (took my dog) in life and fell into Librarianship after doing Degrees that lead to nowhere and ended up doing voluntary work to gain experience. The other half seem to know exactly what they wanted to do when they were still at school, got a library job at a very early age or some kind of experience while still at school and then went on to study part-time or via distance learning.
Sunday 18 September 2011
Thing 19 - Integrating things
I think I should retitle this as "Things to do" as my list of things to look into once the 23 steps has finished seems to be getting rather long. Looking at my daily routine, I now blog and tweet on a regular basis but hope to extend this further - ie blog about more things and follow more people on twitter.
Although I subscribed to a load of RSS Feeds, I keep forgetting to check them! I get regular updates from Linkedin but plan to contribute to some of the discussions. I also hope to use and get more involved in some of the online networks in general.
I was fairly involved in professional activities and professional development before though may need to look at organising something in the future for a challenge. I also need to get more involved in advocacy, probably the easiest way is to sign up for helping with "Voices for the Library".
I can't see myself using Pushnote or the citation references. I'm also happy using a paper diary and Outlook rather than switch to using Google calendar. I could see myself using Google Docs for work and home. I also plan to contribute to the Library Day in the Life and Library Routes Project wikis. I didn't have much success in downloading Evernote but one of my work colleagues who is also signed up for the 23 Steps says it's very useful and I should have another go in downloading it.
I can see myself using Jing in the future, the audio aspect would be particularly useful for work with our visually impaired clients in mind. Podcasts are also useful for this group and we tend to use quite a few of these on our website already. Another thing to do on my list is to investigate the Podwhating course further as I felt I needed to take more time on this to do a proper job.
Although I subscribed to a load of RSS Feeds, I keep forgetting to check them! I get regular updates from Linkedin but plan to contribute to some of the discussions. I also hope to use and get more involved in some of the online networks in general.
I was fairly involved in professional activities and professional development before though may need to look at organising something in the future for a challenge. I also need to get more involved in advocacy, probably the easiest way is to sign up for helping with "Voices for the Library".
I can't see myself using Pushnote or the citation references. I'm also happy using a paper diary and Outlook rather than switch to using Google calendar. I could see myself using Google Docs for work and home. I also plan to contribute to the Library Day in the Life and Library Routes Project wikis. I didn't have much success in downloading Evernote but one of my work colleagues who is also signed up for the 23 Steps says it's very useful and I should have another go in downloading it.
I can see myself using Jing in the future, the audio aspect would be particularly useful for work with our visually impaired clients in mind. Podcasts are also useful for this group and we tend to use quite a few of these on our website already. Another thing to do on my list is to investigate the Podwhating course further as I felt I needed to take more time on this to do a proper job.
Wednesday 14 September 2011
Thing 18 - Jing and Podcasts continued
Thought I'll have a go at the audio side of Jing but have a big snag - I don't possess a microphone anywhere. Have looked in my son's bedroom to see if he has anything but have come back empty handed. This aspect would have been more useful for my work as it's audio rather than visual as our clients are visually impaired.
Will have a look at the online Podcast course mentioned and have a go at downloading Audacity at a later date.
Will have a look at the online Podcast course mentioned and have a go at downloading Audacity at a later date.
Tuesday 13 September 2011
Thing 19 - First attempt at Jing - Map for my son's school taxi
I've never used any of these tools before so thought I'll experiment with Jing first. Wasn't sure what to try so thought I'll start with map instructions for my son's taxi driver to pick 8 children up from Grantham to Spalding. The only thing was I thought the text was too big for the map so didn't use it. Also will play with the audio side and see if I can post some audio instructions.
It took me a while to download this and get to grips on how to use it so ran out of time tonight. Will see if I can have a better attempt at this.
Friday 9 September 2011
Thing 16 Advocacy
I haven't had too much experience of advocacy as far as libraries are concerned, my experience has been more to do with Autism - particularly with writing letters to my local MP and Council. The nearest thing I've come to in advocating our Services is when we went into consultation last year and our Team worked together to put forward our arguments in why we shouldn't have any cuts in our Staff and the detrimental effects that this would have to the Service and the users. I find it difficult to differentiate between advocating our services and promoting our services.
I follow Voices for the library on twitter and plan to contact them and get involved in their campaigns. I did visit one of my local libraries one Saturday when there was suppose to have been various protests going on against the cuts with the hope that there may be a few people holding banners at the door but unfortunately it was business as normal in rural Lincolnshire.
The only work I've had published so far has been this blog and some articles in library-related publications, particularly the CSG Quarterly Newsletter. I'm planning to contribute to the East Midlands Branch Newsletter and the 2 wikis - Library Day in the Life project and Library Routes Project in the near future as these are things that I can realistically do. It's important to publish in non-library publications though else I'm just writing to an already converted audience. I'm going to have to put a bit more thought into this.
I follow Voices for the library on twitter and plan to contact them and get involved in their campaigns. I did visit one of my local libraries one Saturday when there was suppose to have been various protests going on against the cuts with the hope that there may be a few people holding banners at the door but unfortunately it was business as normal in rural Lincolnshire.
The only work I've had published so far has been this blog and some articles in library-related publications, particularly the CSG Quarterly Newsletter. I'm planning to contribute to the East Midlands Branch Newsletter and the 2 wikis - Library Day in the Life project and Library Routes Project in the near future as these are things that I can realistically do. It's important to publish in non-library publications though else I'm just writing to an already converted audience. I'm going to have to put a bit more thought into this.
Monday 5 September 2011
Thing 15 contd - Organising events
Realised afterwards that I published Thing 15 last night only half finished! I inadvertently pressed the enter button instead of save.
I would like the challenge of organising an event though not sure what I would do. I could do something with the East Midlands Branch such as organise a visit to a library though would need to get my thinking cap on which library I would choose. I could aim higher and organise a visit to my work place for a site tour and also hire one of our meeting rooms where we could get some appropriate speakers in to talk about various topics on visual impairment such as organising reading groups for the VI, producing books in alternative format or looking at e-books. We could also organise a stand to have information about the different services we offer ie Talking Book Service and demonstrations on the players or access technology.
Perhaps on second thoughts I should begin small and start with organising a visit for my own Team!
I would like the challenge of organising an event though not sure what I would do. I could do something with the East Midlands Branch such as organise a visit to a library though would need to get my thinking cap on which library I would choose. I could aim higher and organise a visit to my work place for a site tour and also hire one of our meeting rooms where we could get some appropriate speakers in to talk about various topics on visual impairment such as organising reading groups for the VI, producing books in alternative format or looking at e-books. We could also organise a stand to have information about the different services we offer ie Talking Book Service and demonstrations on the players or access technology.
Perhaps on second thoughts I should begin small and start with organising a visit for my own Team!
Sunday 4 September 2011
Thing 15 - Attending etc etc at Seminars etc etc
I've finally taken the plunge and went running after well over a year's rest much to my dog's delight. I only did about 3 miles round the local wood and had a few "blackberry" stops on the way but I've got the bug again and hopefully will keep this up.
Attending
Back to thing 15, I've attended a few conferences and events in the past including Umbrella (for one day) but it has become more difficult recently due to finance and lack of staff. I recommend taking advantage of any free places being offered, I managed to attend the Libraries Change Lives Award last year this way. I had to write a piece afterwards for the CSG Newsletter but it's a good opportunity for professional development. I also try and volunteer myself to help out on the RNIB Stand where possible as it's a good chance to network with fellow professionals and, in some case, our customers.
I've become more involved with the East Midlands CILIP Branch as the visits and the AGM's have been free or a nominal fee charged and some have also involved a workshop. For example, the visit to Worksop Library also included a workshop on portfolios and chartering/revalidation. Although it's always abit daunting to start with, it's quite nice to see familiar faces as you start going to a few events and it's also a good chance to talk to people that are in a different sector to yourself. I also recommend checking out your Special Group's AGM. This year's CSG AGM incorporated a workshop on Public Libraries and Social Justice.
Presenting
I've never spoken at a Conference before and haven't really considered it. I'm not sure if I feel comfortable doing this though I did do a Train the trainers course several years ago and enjoyed presenting in front of the rest of the class. I think I'll be too worried about the question and answer session afterwards that I won't be able to answer the questions! Maybe this is something I ought to think about in the future.
Attending
Back to thing 15, I've attended a few conferences and events in the past including Umbrella (for one day) but it has become more difficult recently due to finance and lack of staff. I recommend taking advantage of any free places being offered, I managed to attend the Libraries Change Lives Award last year this way. I had to write a piece afterwards for the CSG Newsletter but it's a good opportunity for professional development. I also try and volunteer myself to help out on the RNIB Stand where possible as it's a good chance to network with fellow professionals and, in some case, our customers.
I've become more involved with the East Midlands CILIP Branch as the visits and the AGM's have been free or a nominal fee charged and some have also involved a workshop. For example, the visit to Worksop Library also included a workshop on portfolios and chartering/revalidation. Although it's always abit daunting to start with, it's quite nice to see familiar faces as you start going to a few events and it's also a good chance to talk to people that are in a different sector to yourself. I also recommend checking out your Special Group's AGM. This year's CSG AGM incorporated a workshop on Public Libraries and Social Justice.
Presenting
I've never spoken at a Conference before and haven't really considered it. I'm not sure if I feel comfortable doing this though I did do a Train the trainers course several years ago and enjoyed presenting in front of the rest of the class. I think I'll be too worried about the question and answer session afterwards that I won't be able to answer the questions! Maybe this is something I ought to think about in the future.
Saturday 3 September 2011
Thing 14 - Zotero, Mendeley and Citeulike
Just tried to tweet the world that I've now reached Thing 14 but twitter is over capacity. I'm not the only one without a social life on a Saturday night then! Been distracted last week with Leeds/Reading Festival along with Spa F1 so have managed to get myself behind again. Some entertaining moments from Reading include Bring On The Horizon, Crystal Castles and The National but honestly really does anyone seriously like The Vaccines?
I was also one that had to manually type out my bibliography at the end of my dissertation and essays though I don't remember it being too much of a chore. It was satisfying in a way that it meant that I had nearly finished an essay!
I haven't got Firefox so didn't look at Zotero. As I'm in a job where I don't have to write reports etc or help students/lecturers with their research, I didn't experiment with the others much except just to read abit about them to get an overview. I didn't have any previous knowledge of these tools available so I've taken something away from Thing 14.
I was also one that had to manually type out my bibliography at the end of my dissertation and essays though I don't remember it being too much of a chore. It was satisfying in a way that it meant that I had nearly finished an essay!
I haven't got Firefox so didn't look at Zotero. As I'm in a job where I don't have to write reports etc or help students/lecturers with their research, I didn't experiment with the others much except just to read abit about them to get an overview. I didn't have any previous knowledge of these tools available so I've taken something away from Thing 14.
Thursday 25 August 2011
Thing 13 - Google docs, Wikis and Dropbox
Just spent a tiring day spending loadsa money in Nottingham - sadly not for me but for my young son. He's come back with bags full of tops and jeans though we had a strange encounter in BHS where one of the assistant seemed miffed that I took him in the ladies changing rooms to try his clothes on. I told her that he was abit young to go in the men's on his own but she said I should have taken him in there. Thought it would have been more embarrasing for the men with me being there than for the women with my son being in the women's changing room.
Back to the subject of Thing 13, File sharing is often a problem with our team as we are on split sites - Peterborough and Stockport. Our biggest problem is book selection where we work from spreadsheets and we end up having to email them to each other quite a few times each month. Joint projects also cause problems too. Google docs and Dropbox may help with this. I couldn't actually get Dropbox to download on my computer so didn't get too far with this.
I use wikipedia quite a bit though wary of the accuracy of the content there. I also find wikireadia useful. I hadn't heard of Library Day in the Life Project before and spent some time looking at this. I may contribute in the next round (January 2012). I could put a reminder on my Google Calendar! I also looked at the Library Routes Project, again, this was new to me. I may even contribute my Thing 10 from my CPD23 to this wiki in the near future.
Back to the subject of Thing 13, File sharing is often a problem with our team as we are on split sites - Peterborough and Stockport. Our biggest problem is book selection where we work from spreadsheets and we end up having to email them to each other quite a few times each month. Joint projects also cause problems too. Google docs and Dropbox may help with this. I couldn't actually get Dropbox to download on my computer so didn't get too far with this.
I use wikipedia quite a bit though wary of the accuracy of the content there. I also find wikireadia useful. I hadn't heard of Library Day in the Life Project before and spent some time looking at this. I may contribute in the next round (January 2012). I could put a reminder on my Google Calendar! I also looked at the Library Routes Project, again, this was new to me. I may even contribute my Thing 10 from my CPD23 to this wiki in the near future.
Wednesday 24 August 2011
Thing 12 - Putting the social into social media
If you had asked me 6 months ago do you blog or tweet or have you joined facebook or linkedIn, I would have laughed at you and told you don't be silly! So, in that respect I have made a giant leap into the unknown. I don't think that I've taken full advantage of what's out there and I'm just a passive spectator. I maybe need to actively participate in an online discussion or follow a tweet from an ongoing event. A few blogs mentioned that they followed the progress of the riots through Twitter. I enjoy blogging and tweeting but I'm not sure if anybody actually reads them. I'm only getting the negative effects of social media as I'm getting a few nuisance tweets so may have to cancel my twitter account if it continues. I've not really followed facebook through but I'm finding the email updates I get from joining LinkedIn 23 steps group useful. I think that if I get into the situation that I'm having to look for another job, I would probably use social media alot more.
Sunday 21 August 2011
Thing 11 - Mentoring
I haven't got a mentor. Every year I put Find a mentor on my to-do list and keep meaning to go on the CILIP web site to find one in my area that can mentor librarians that are revalidating but never seem to get round to it. Maybe this should be my prime aim for next year, particularly that I will be in my final year of revalidation.
Thing 10 - Why I became a Librarian and how I got there
I didn’t start off as a Librarian. I started off doing the usual thing you do in my era as a girl from a working class background growing up in a small town with a handful of O levels do - leaving at 16 to do a one year secretarial course and ending up at in an office job at one of the local large firms. I quickly got bored and did a few evening classes to improve my O Level tally with a vague idea that it might get me a better job. I was also discovering the bright and exciting lights of city life and in the next round of redundancies (in which there were many rounds) I volunteered redundancy and headed off to Nottingham with a vague idea that I was going to do something different. I managed to quickly fix myself up with a temporary job while I decided what to do next. I ended up enrolling on one year part time A level courses in Psychology and Communications and Media at South Notts College (Possibly one of the happiest years of my life) and then was encouraged by my Tutor to go on and do a BA Honours Degree in Social Sciences.
Three years later, with a 2/1 Degree under my belt, I was still no clearer what I wanted to do except that I wanted to use my Degree. After more hours pouring through careers books, I came up with 3 ideas - Social Research, Careers Adviser (to provide young people better advice than I had been given) or to work in a library - preferably in a Social Sciences Department in a University Library. After a very dismal interview at York University to do Social Research and then trooping off to Guildford for the same course and never hearing anything back, I gave up with that idea and went for Plan B - working in a library.
My first priority was to get myself some library experience under my belt before applying for a place on a postgraduate Library and Information Management course so I wrote to various libraries in the East Midlands to see if I could get myself a 6 week voluntary placement and was lucky to end up locally at Gedling Area Libraries. I initially did 6 weeks and after a stint on the enquiry desk, a class visit, a morning learning about aromatherapy, going out on a bear hunt with the under 5’s and decorating the children’s library, I learnt that librarianship was much more than I had previously thought. I carried on going to Carlton Library on Tuesday evenings and Saturday mornings while temping in the day time, with the idea that the more experience I could gain, the better chance I would have in getting a postgraduate place. I then managed to spend the summer combining temping with setting up an information centre at Netherfield St Georges Centre in an attempt to gain as much experience as I possibly could. After a major setback at a certain University’s open days/interviews which shall remain nameless where it was proclaimed by their Head of Department there that they rarely rejected applicants unless they were really bad and then receiving a rejection letter a few days later, I was offered a couple of places - Sheffield University and University of Northumbria. Better still, University of Northumbria offered me a much envied mature student’s bursary which sealed my decision. (From there I learnt that quite a few people had been put off by their experience at the University which remains nameless by their rejection letters too, there was obviously a lot of bad applicants that day!).
I’m used to condensed courses with my evening classes and fitting 2 A levels in the shortest possible period but this course must have been the most intensive thing I had done. I think what struck me more about this course was not the content itself but the work ethic of everyone and how everybody worked together to cram which was effectively a 3 years degree in to a 9 months Postgraduate! A bigger challenge was to follow, trying to find a professional library job against brighter and /or more experienced candidates.
I knew my experience was still limited compared to most people so as soon as I finished my course, I found myself some voluntary work - this time at Mencap and Dial (UK) in Doncaster and again combined it with more temping. After becoming an expert on how to get from Nottingham to Doncaster on public transport in the shortest possible time and how to live on nothing for the last few years, I was given a break. I was offered an interview for a Resource Centre Assistant at Arnold and Carlton College but after being unsuccessful, I then had another phone call a few days later asking if I would like a temporary library assistant post in the library. I didn’t have enough experience for the initial job but the Librarian had decided that she liked to give me a chance and came up with this additional job instead!
After 6 months I was finally successful in obtaining my first professional job (albeit job-share) at Charles Keene College as an Assistant Librarian. I still filled in my spare days trying to improve on my experience by signing on the Nottingham County Council Professional Register and working at Arnold and Carlton as a relief library assistant. After a couple of years of building up my experience with this strange mix of jobs, I decided to have another go at applying for a full time professional post and managed to find one quite quickly - my current post at RNIB.
I’ve been in my current post since 1996, a lot longer than I planned. The job has changed radically, responsibilities have come and gone particularly with the new advancements in technology, and I’ve survived quite a few restructures ! I’ve managed to charter in the process - via the old report route B way and I’m now in my second year in revalidating which has made me keep my focus on professional development. One of my aims was to become more involved in networking which I’ve achieved. I still keep my eye on the job market but realistically there has been very little to apply for lately.
Three years later, with a 2/1 Degree under my belt, I was still no clearer what I wanted to do except that I wanted to use my Degree. After more hours pouring through careers books, I came up with 3 ideas - Social Research, Careers Adviser (to provide young people better advice than I had been given) or to work in a library - preferably in a Social Sciences Department in a University Library. After a very dismal interview at York University to do Social Research and then trooping off to Guildford for the same course and never hearing anything back, I gave up with that idea and went for Plan B - working in a library.
My first priority was to get myself some library experience under my belt before applying for a place on a postgraduate Library and Information Management course so I wrote to various libraries in the East Midlands to see if I could get myself a 6 week voluntary placement and was lucky to end up locally at Gedling Area Libraries. I initially did 6 weeks and after a stint on the enquiry desk, a class visit, a morning learning about aromatherapy, going out on a bear hunt with the under 5’s and decorating the children’s library, I learnt that librarianship was much more than I had previously thought. I carried on going to Carlton Library on Tuesday evenings and Saturday mornings while temping in the day time, with the idea that the more experience I could gain, the better chance I would have in getting a postgraduate place. I then managed to spend the summer combining temping with setting up an information centre at Netherfield St Georges Centre in an attempt to gain as much experience as I possibly could. After a major setback at a certain University’s open days/interviews which shall remain nameless where it was proclaimed by their Head of Department there that they rarely rejected applicants unless they were really bad and then receiving a rejection letter a few days later, I was offered a couple of places - Sheffield University and University of Northumbria. Better still, University of Northumbria offered me a much envied mature student’s bursary which sealed my decision. (From there I learnt that quite a few people had been put off by their experience at the University which remains nameless by their rejection letters too, there was obviously a lot of bad applicants that day!).
I’m used to condensed courses with my evening classes and fitting 2 A levels in the shortest possible period but this course must have been the most intensive thing I had done. I think what struck me more about this course was not the content itself but the work ethic of everyone and how everybody worked together to cram which was effectively a 3 years degree in to a 9 months Postgraduate! A bigger challenge was to follow, trying to find a professional library job against brighter and /or more experienced candidates.
I knew my experience was still limited compared to most people so as soon as I finished my course, I found myself some voluntary work - this time at Mencap and Dial (UK) in Doncaster and again combined it with more temping. After becoming an expert on how to get from Nottingham to Doncaster on public transport in the shortest possible time and how to live on nothing for the last few years, I was given a break. I was offered an interview for a Resource Centre Assistant at Arnold and Carlton College but after being unsuccessful, I then had another phone call a few days later asking if I would like a temporary library assistant post in the library. I didn’t have enough experience for the initial job but the Librarian had decided that she liked to give me a chance and came up with this additional job instead!
After 6 months I was finally successful in obtaining my first professional job (albeit job-share) at Charles Keene College as an Assistant Librarian. I still filled in my spare days trying to improve on my experience by signing on the Nottingham County Council Professional Register and working at Arnold and Carlton as a relief library assistant. After a couple of years of building up my experience with this strange mix of jobs, I decided to have another go at applying for a full time professional post and managed to find one quite quickly - my current post at RNIB.
I’ve been in my current post since 1996, a lot longer than I planned. The job has changed radically, responsibilities have come and gone particularly with the new advancements in technology, and I’ve survived quite a few restructures ! I’ve managed to charter in the process - via the old report route B way and I’m now in my second year in revalidating which has made me keep my focus on professional development. One of my aims was to become more involved in networking which I’ve achieved. I still keep my eye on the job market but realistically there has been very little to apply for lately.
Tuesday 9 August 2011
Thing 9 - Evernote - I need to be convinced about this
After looking at the notes and registering on the Evernote website and reading through their guide, I'm not really convinced whether I will use this. I read some blogs and while some nearly convinced me to download Evernote and have a play with it, others had the same doubts as me. I decided that as I'm behind and I want to blog about things other than the 23 steps, I've not investigated further for now - unless someone can totally convince me that's it's worth spending my evening doing so.
Thing 8 - Google Calendar
Just starting to recover from The Big Chill Festival and now persuading my brain to focus on some work on the 23 steps which seems to have fallen by the wayside at the moment. I had a go at the google calendar and although I enjoyed setting it up for August, I can't see myself making use of it and maintaining it. I'm quite happy with using my old-fashioned diary which is very portable and accessible and can be easily carried around in my bag. I use the Outlook calendar at work which is set out in a very similar way to the google calendar and I can access other work colleagues' calendars via this. I couldn't see the extra benefits of google calendar compared to what I use now.
Saturday 23 July 2011
Thing 6 - Now it's finally time for online networking
I'm very behind with the times when it comes to social networking. I've only really got into Twitter since this course, I've tweeted tonight but at the moment I only tweet cpd23 stuff. I'm not on Facebook or LinkedIn and had never given them a second look before until now. I haven't really made my mind up whether I'm missing out by not using them. I joined Facebook and LinkedIn tonight rather half-heartedly as I think I can't really comment on them unless I have actual experience of using them. I think I'll probably go back and have a good look at my profile on LinkedIn at a later date as I think this one looks the more useful of the 2 professionally. So far, I've just done the briefest of profiles and joined the 23 things for professional development group. I also had a quick look at the CILIP Communities, again I think it's going to be one to revisit at a later date.
Thing 7 - Networking face-to-face
I know I'm doing Thing 7 before Thing 6 but I thought I'll get the easiest Thing of the 2 done first as I've got alot to say on this one. I already hear the sound of the mouse as people quickly escape this blog.
I managed to go to one of the face-to-face networking events held last week. I was quite fortunate that one of my work colleagues who is also doing the 23 steps arranged a meet in The Brewery Tap in Peterborough - a pub that sells real ales and Thai food - what's there not to be liked! Seven hardy souls turned up and they weren't all from the RNIB so I can call that proper networking - 4 RNIB staff, one school librarian, one health librarian and one college librarian - so a good mix.
I'm a member of CILIP and have been a member since I started my Postgraduate course back in em......1992, better known as The Library Association in those days. My Special Interest groups are Community Services Group (continuous) and Career Development (from this year). I was a member of COFHE for a number of years until I realised that I hadn't received any mailings for quite a few years, time for a change. I also fall under the East Midlands Branch of CILIP.
I've become more actively involved in CILIP acivities as, with a lot of frontline library jobs, there is not much opportunity to develop in the job itself, so I'm always looking to gain knowledge and improve skills further afield. I also think I'm in danger of getting too wrapped up with just issues to do with visual impairment so networking is a good reminder of the wider library world. Luckily, since RNIB merged with National Library for the Blind, we have had new Library Management who have actively encouraged us to get involve with CILIP. However, like I expect with most library staff today, it can be difficult sometimes to get time off because of staffing issues and we have a busy telephone with a lot of needy customers to look after! I had also identified in my Chartership Report that networking and professional involvement in CILIP was something I needed to improve on so I feel that I'm addressing one weakness.
I've been to a few East Midlands events including a couple of AGMs which had guest speakers from CILIP, visits including Lincoln Cathedral Library and Lord Tennyson Library and a workshop on portfolios and revalidation. I'm hoping that they will run a workshop on reflective writing this year. It's quite good to get away for the day and network with Librarians from such a wide field and different professional levels. It's also nice to see familiar faces when you go to an event, networking becomes easier each time you go to something.
I've also started to become involve with the CSG. After winning a place at the Libraries Change Lives Awards in 2010 and writing an article about the event, I decided to take the plunge and volunteer to go on the Committee. After being a member for so long with this group, I decided it was time that I should contribute something back. I've only been to 3 meetings so far, the first one was very daunting walking into the room for the first time though felt better once I had an opportunity to contribute to the conversation! The second meeting also combined the annual AGM and a workshop - Public Libraries and Social Justice - which again opened my eyes to the wider world of public libraries and gave me an oportunity to meet some interesting people who were involved in some inspirational projects in their libraries. Networking also gives me the chance to promote the RNIB and the library services they offer to Public Librarians. I was also introduced to Wikireadia at http://www.wikireadia.org.uk/ which is a really useful website used by quite a few of the participants there. I've volunteered myself to help out with running a course at the end of the year which will be good experience. I've also contributed an article on MANIL Make a Noise in Libraries fortnight to the CSG Newsletter earlier this year. I'm also in the process of putting together an article for the CSG Website on Why I decided to join the CSG Committee. I'm hoping that the longer I'm on the Committee and the more background knowledge I pick up about the workings of the group, the more involved I will become and be comfortable in volunteering for more things.
I did have a quick look at some of the other suggested library organisations including IFLA and SLA. The online videos on the SLA looked interesting but this may be something to consider for the future, money depending! I also had a look at The Library Society of the World but I think the informal ethos led to a too informal and messy website which didn't really grab my attention. It probably may be fun to join if you had more time on your hands to join in the debates but I'm usually in a hurry and want to find information easily.
I managed to go to one of the face-to-face networking events held last week. I was quite fortunate that one of my work colleagues who is also doing the 23 steps arranged a meet in The Brewery Tap in Peterborough - a pub that sells real ales and Thai food - what's there not to be liked! Seven hardy souls turned up and they weren't all from the RNIB so I can call that proper networking - 4 RNIB staff, one school librarian, one health librarian and one college librarian - so a good mix.
I'm a member of CILIP and have been a member since I started my Postgraduate course back in em......1992, better known as The Library Association in those days. My Special Interest groups are Community Services Group (continuous) and Career Development (from this year). I was a member of COFHE for a number of years until I realised that I hadn't received any mailings for quite a few years, time for a change. I also fall under the East Midlands Branch of CILIP.
I've become more actively involved in CILIP acivities as, with a lot of frontline library jobs, there is not much opportunity to develop in the job itself, so I'm always looking to gain knowledge and improve skills further afield. I also think I'm in danger of getting too wrapped up with just issues to do with visual impairment so networking is a good reminder of the wider library world. Luckily, since RNIB merged with National Library for the Blind, we have had new Library Management who have actively encouraged us to get involve with CILIP. However, like I expect with most library staff today, it can be difficult sometimes to get time off because of staffing issues and we have a busy telephone with a lot of needy customers to look after! I had also identified in my Chartership Report that networking and professional involvement in CILIP was something I needed to improve on so I feel that I'm addressing one weakness.
I've been to a few East Midlands events including a couple of AGMs which had guest speakers from CILIP, visits including Lincoln Cathedral Library and Lord Tennyson Library and a workshop on portfolios and revalidation. I'm hoping that they will run a workshop on reflective writing this year. It's quite good to get away for the day and network with Librarians from such a wide field and different professional levels. It's also nice to see familiar faces when you go to an event, networking becomes easier each time you go to something.
I've also started to become involve with the CSG. After winning a place at the Libraries Change Lives Awards in 2010 and writing an article about the event, I decided to take the plunge and volunteer to go on the Committee. After being a member for so long with this group, I decided it was time that I should contribute something back. I've only been to 3 meetings so far, the first one was very daunting walking into the room for the first time though felt better once I had an opportunity to contribute to the conversation! The second meeting also combined the annual AGM and a workshop - Public Libraries and Social Justice - which again opened my eyes to the wider world of public libraries and gave me an oportunity to meet some interesting people who were involved in some inspirational projects in their libraries. Networking also gives me the chance to promote the RNIB and the library services they offer to Public Librarians. I was also introduced to Wikireadia at http://www.wikireadia.org.uk/ which is a really useful website used by quite a few of the participants there. I've volunteered myself to help out with running a course at the end of the year which will be good experience. I've also contributed an article on MANIL Make a Noise in Libraries fortnight to the CSG Newsletter earlier this year. I'm also in the process of putting together an article for the CSG Website on Why I decided to join the CSG Committee. I'm hoping that the longer I'm on the Committee and the more background knowledge I pick up about the workings of the group, the more involved I will become and be comfortable in volunteering for more things.
I did have a quick look at some of the other suggested library organisations including IFLA and SLA. The online videos on the SLA looked interesting but this may be something to consider for the future, money depending! I also had a look at The Library Society of the World but I think the informal ethos led to a too informal and messy website which didn't really grab my attention. It probably may be fun to join if you had more time on your hands to join in the debates but I'm usually in a hurry and want to find information easily.
Monday 18 July 2011
Thing 5 - I've been reflecting alot
So what have I been up to these last few weeks. Well, I've started a blog and a twitter account (and in the process discovered some half-hearted attempts from 2009), set up some RSS Feeds on various websites, learnt that there was something called Pushnote, thought alot about my online brand and from that, discovered that I was a sumo wrestler and an actress that starred in films such as Naughty Marietta in my spare time.
The question is what have I learnt so far? Firstly that it's right what people say that learning has to be relevant to the learner. I did a Web 2.0 course back in 2009 and didn't made use of it because I didn't have a computer at home, I wasn't allowed to use Twitter and similar web 2.0 technology at work and also there are problems of lack of accessibility to our visually impaired customers.
I've discovered that blogging and tweeting is fun and something that I would continue and is not just for sad technies who have nothing better to do in their life. I plan to start other professional blogs on things such as Revalidation and book reviews along with some more leisure blogs. I enjoy writing and tend to be spontanious in my writing style - I prefer to put my thoughts directly onto the blog rather than planning things out first. A little bit of this is due to lack of time though!
On reflection, I should have thought about my online brand first before putting my blog together and looked at some guides on how to make your blog more attractive and eye-catching. This becomes more apparent as I look at other participants' blogs. I've noticed that the more established and confident bloggers tend to use wordpress so I may investigate this further. I'm hoping my blog will evolve and gain extra features as I develop it. I'm still trying to work out how to insert images!
I'm also going to spend more time in leaving comments on other blogs. They may appreciate that there is somebody out there who is actually reading their blog as there is the slight worry that nobody is reading your blog and you're writing for the sake of it.
I'm not sure how much I will tweet once this course ends. I usually try and tweet as I work on my CPD23 in the evenings and it may be that it will become second nature to tweet most days.
I'm going to make better use of RSS Feeds for work and leisure as I think this will cut alot of time spent looking at web sites for new info.
I can't really comment on Pushnote as I have Internet Explorer and there wasn't much love for Pushnote from other cpd23 participants.
The next question is how can I apply all these new skills to the workplace and what can be practically (and realistically) applied. We are reviewing the library web pages in the near future so it would be a good opportunity to incorporate these new technologies. We can now use twitter at work so it would have been useful to tweet at Sight Village last week and it might be good to tweet on a daily basis at work. It would be good to start up a team blog on the library website where someone can blog on a regular basis on what's going on in the Reader Services Team - a new book going in to the library, an interesting enquiry or a new development which may be of interest to the Reader. We could also set up a blog for our work's book club where we could post our book reviews on for everyone to view. The most obvious thing for RSS feeds is to update readers on what new books have been added to the library catalogue or the library website in general. If given the opportunity, I would be happy to volunteer to take on board at least one of these ideas but if I don't get the chance at work, I will continue to blog and tweet at home.
The question is what have I learnt so far? Firstly that it's right what people say that learning has to be relevant to the learner. I did a Web 2.0 course back in 2009 and didn't made use of it because I didn't have a computer at home, I wasn't allowed to use Twitter and similar web 2.0 technology at work and also there are problems of lack of accessibility to our visually impaired customers.
I've discovered that blogging and tweeting is fun and something that I would continue and is not just for sad technies who have nothing better to do in their life. I plan to start other professional blogs on things such as Revalidation and book reviews along with some more leisure blogs. I enjoy writing and tend to be spontanious in my writing style - I prefer to put my thoughts directly onto the blog rather than planning things out first. A little bit of this is due to lack of time though!
On reflection, I should have thought about my online brand first before putting my blog together and looked at some guides on how to make your blog more attractive and eye-catching. This becomes more apparent as I look at other participants' blogs. I've noticed that the more established and confident bloggers tend to use wordpress so I may investigate this further. I'm hoping my blog will evolve and gain extra features as I develop it. I'm still trying to work out how to insert images!
I'm also going to spend more time in leaving comments on other blogs. They may appreciate that there is somebody out there who is actually reading their blog as there is the slight worry that nobody is reading your blog and you're writing for the sake of it.
I'm not sure how much I will tweet once this course ends. I usually try and tweet as I work on my CPD23 in the evenings and it may be that it will become second nature to tweet most days.
I'm going to make better use of RSS Feeds for work and leisure as I think this will cut alot of time spent looking at web sites for new info.
I can't really comment on Pushnote as I have Internet Explorer and there wasn't much love for Pushnote from other cpd23 participants.
The next question is how can I apply all these new skills to the workplace and what can be practically (and realistically) applied. We are reviewing the library web pages in the near future so it would be a good opportunity to incorporate these new technologies. We can now use twitter at work so it would have been useful to tweet at Sight Village last week and it might be good to tweet on a daily basis at work. It would be good to start up a team blog on the library website where someone can blog on a regular basis on what's going on in the Reader Services Team - a new book going in to the library, an interesting enquiry or a new development which may be of interest to the Reader. We could also set up a blog for our work's book club where we could post our book reviews on for everyone to view. The most obvious thing for RSS feeds is to update readers on what new books have been added to the library catalogue or the library website in general. If given the opportunity, I would be happy to volunteer to take on board at least one of these ideas but if I don't get the chance at work, I will continue to blog and tweet at home.
Sunday 17 July 2011
Thing 4 - Are we nearly there yet? Yes - we're on Pushnote.
I've got to admit that I hadn't heard of Pushnote before I started this course. Unfortunately, my browser is Internet Explorer so I won't be able to get practical experience of this. I had a look at their FAQ page which didn't give me much more information that I had already known.
I then looked through some of the other participant's blogs to see their views. Alot of the Thing 4 blogs had done the Twitter and RSS Feeds but hadn't looked at Pushnote. The ones that had tried Pushnote were mainly quite negative about its usefulness. Comments included that Pushnote wasn't offering anything new to other social networking sites that already exist such as Twitter. Quite a few of the bloggers had also given up quite quickly citing that they just didn't get it.
I found one blog - Charlie's 23 things for professional development - that offered some useful comments both positive and negative and also referred to a couple of useful recent articles on the Techcrunch website. This blog highlighted one major problem that a website’s owner couldn't remove any of the Pushnote comments linked to their site which will be a problem if the comments are false or malicious.
I then looked through some of the other participant's blogs to see their views. Alot of the Thing 4 blogs had done the Twitter and RSS Feeds but hadn't looked at Pushnote. The ones that had tried Pushnote were mainly quite negative about its usefulness. Comments included that Pushnote wasn't offering anything new to other social networking sites that already exist such as Twitter. Quite a few of the bloggers had also given up quite quickly citing that they just didn't get it.
I found one blog - Charlie's 23 things for professional development - that offered some useful comments both positive and negative and also referred to a couple of useful recent articles on the Techcrunch website. This blog highlighted one major problem that a website’s owner couldn't remove any of the Pushnote comments linked to their site which will be a problem if the comments are false or malicious.
Saturday 16 July 2011
Thing 4 continued! - RSS Feeds
When will Thing 4 end I ask myself forgetting that I've been easily distracted? I went in my blog last night to work on Thing 4 and to my horror noticed that my last post was full of spelling mistakes. I knew I was tired but..... Liberary? Sevices? After giving my blog a good spell check, I had a light bulb moment and remembered how to change the font as I had thought the font was far too small on my blog. So after playing around with that for a while and sending a few tweets, I remembered the reason why I was on my blog.....RSS Feeds.
I've set up an RSS feed for the CPD blogs and participants and had a look at the recommended list and set a few feeds for these too. Phil Bradley then planted the idea of setting up an RSS Feed for the BBC News which I thought was a good idea. I then thought about all of the other sites - professional and leisure - I regularly look at and decided to work through those. I then got distracted again and started adding other gadgets to my google page, totally forgetting about Pushnote.
I got to admit I thought RSS Feeds was just the automatic emails that came to me on a regular basis from Freeprint, Internet Librarian, Information Today Europe, CILIP, ICan and National Autistic Society, so accessing news from your Reader was something new. It's certainly a quicker way of checking your favourite sites for updates and probably better than getting hundreds of emails which you ignore for later as you're too busy and then never get round to reading it.
I can also see why RSS Feeds is a desirable requirement for library systems to let readers know what new books have been added to the catalogue in their favourite subject or author.
I've set up an RSS feed for the CPD blogs and participants and had a look at the recommended list and set a few feeds for these too. Phil Bradley then planted the idea of setting up an RSS Feed for the BBC News which I thought was a good idea. I then thought about all of the other sites - professional and leisure - I regularly look at and decided to work through those. I then got distracted again and started adding other gadgets to my google page, totally forgetting about Pushnote.
I got to admit I thought RSS Feeds was just the automatic emails that came to me on a regular basis from Freeprint, Internet Librarian, Information Today Europe, CILIP, ICan and National Autistic Society, so accessing news from your Reader was something new. It's certainly a quicker way of checking your favourite sites for updates and probably better than getting hundreds of emails which you ignore for later as you're too busy and then never get round to reading it.
I can also see why RSS Feeds is a desirable requirement for library systems to let readers know what new books have been added to the catalogue in their favourite subject or author.
Wednesday 13 July 2011
Thing 4 - Twitter continued
After a busy week with a full governor's meeting as a parent-governor at my son's school last night and helping out at Sight Village in Birmingham on the RNIB National Library Services stand today, I've finally managed to sit down at 9.30 tonight to have another look at twitter. I went through some of the recommended twitter accounts and decided to have a maximum of 5 to follow.
Publiclibnews and UKpling
I thought it would be useful to keep abreast on what's happening to UK public libraries and the opposition to library cuts.
infolitgroup
I've always had an interest in information literacy stemmed from my work in college libraries.
CILIPinfo
For obvious reasons!
Philbradley
My enthusiasm for Web 2.0 has grown since this course, after being indifferent before. Who else would be a better person to follow!
I also posted another tweet myself and had a look at libchat. I'll like to have a go and join in to see how this works. I can also see the benefits of tweeting at something like a Conference as I've just found out that Kent Libraries has won the Libraries change lives award through twitter.
Publiclibnews and UKpling
I thought it would be useful to keep abreast on what's happening to UK public libraries and the opposition to library cuts.
infolitgroup
I've always had an interest in information literacy stemmed from my work in college libraries.
CILIPinfo
For obvious reasons!
Philbradley
My enthusiasm for Web 2.0 has grown since this course, after being indifferent before. Who else would be a better person to follow!
I also posted another tweet myself and had a look at libchat. I'll like to have a go and join in to see how this works. I can also see the benefits of tweeting at something like a Conference as I've just found out that Kent Libraries has won the Libraries change lives award through twitter.
Monday 11 July 2011
Thing 4 - Twitter
I've finally managed to start looking at Thing 4 and set myself up a Twitter Account, only to discover that I already had one which I must have set up on the Web 2.0 course back in 2009! I actually had gained 4 followers who didn't have much to do following me the last 2 years.
I think the problem with the web 2.0 course back in 2009 was the lack of relevance to me at that time as we weren't allowed to use things like twitter etc at work, web 2.0 technology isn't very accessible for visually impaired people (our customers) and I didn't have a computer at home.
I updated my profile and managed to link my blog to my twitter account with few problems. I've sent a couple of tweets so far, seems pretty straight forward though quite a challenge to stick to the character limit. Also tried to see if I could easily add my tweet button to my blog but need to find a bit more help on how to do this.
My next step is to get in the habit of sending tweets on a regular basis and try and get some followers! The cyber world can be quite a lonely place. I'm also going to look at some of the recommended tweeters and pick a few to follow.
On reflecting on the 23 steps so far, I certainly would keep the blog going and would try and put something on most days. I would also perhaps have a go at some none library blogs. I also want to design my blog more - add a few images and gadgets such as the tweet button.
With regards to Twitter, I think I need to give it a few weeks before I decide on its usefulness for me.
I think the problem with the web 2.0 course back in 2009 was the lack of relevance to me at that time as we weren't allowed to use things like twitter etc at work, web 2.0 technology isn't very accessible for visually impaired people (our customers) and I didn't have a computer at home.
I updated my profile and managed to link my blog to my twitter account with few problems. I've sent a couple of tweets so far, seems pretty straight forward though quite a challenge to stick to the character limit. Also tried to see if I could easily add my tweet button to my blog but need to find a bit more help on how to do this.
My next step is to get in the habit of sending tweets on a regular basis and try and get some followers! The cyber world can be quite a lonely place. I'm also going to look at some of the recommended tweeters and pick a few to follow.
On reflecting on the 23 steps so far, I certainly would keep the blog going and would try and put something on most days. I would also perhaps have a go at some none library blogs. I also want to design my blog more - add a few images and gadgets such as the tweet button.
With regards to Twitter, I think I need to give it a few weeks before I decide on its usefulness for me.
Sunday 3 July 2011
Thing 3 - My personal brand
I've not had much of a chance these last few days to think about my personal brand. It's peak time in the garden with the soft fruit, cabbages and cauliflower. Plenty of blackcurrant ice cream and strawberry cheese cake to make.....and eat.
On hindsight, I should have thought about my blog first before putting fingers to keyboard and thought about my online image and how I'm presenting myself to the outside world. I think I was just concerned about doing a blog as this was all new to me but it's now becoming more evident that you need to think about how to portray yourself or even "advertise" yourself. Thankfully, this is my only online presence at the moment. Looking at the other comments about branding, we are either all very "English" and are uncomfortable with the concept of branding ourselves or we go all out for it and have a very strong personality!
As you can probably gather, I didn't plan my blog but I quite like my black background and white lettering. I think the 1980's goth punk is coming out in me with the days of black clothes, dry ice and Sisters of Mercy. I scarily saw an advert for a 30th anniversary gig for Sisters of Mercy recently and felt very old. I would like to add some images, particularly try and find one that I could use consistently, but have not yet worked out how to do this.
I like the idea of bringing together the professional and personal. I think I'm getting more comfortable in blogging about things in general and not just work so I think I would continue to do that. I like how some blogs list the books they are currently reading or music they are currently listening to. In my case - Barbara Kingsolver - The lacuna and Portishead - Third.
According to google, I'm a farmer's wife, an actress (apparently one of my films is called Naughty Marietta), I'm dead and there's an online orbituary telling the world how kind and unselfish I was, I'm a hairdresser/beauty therapist, a sculptress and a sumo wrestler and can be seen in action on U-Tube! Sometimes I even put Eliza in front of my name and do abit of country singing and even appear on Jools Holland. In my spare time, I'm a Librarian and appear on page 14 with a conference report for CILIP Libraries Change Lives 2010.
On hindsight, I should have thought about my blog first before putting fingers to keyboard and thought about my online image and how I'm presenting myself to the outside world. I think I was just concerned about doing a blog as this was all new to me but it's now becoming more evident that you need to think about how to portray yourself or even "advertise" yourself. Thankfully, this is my only online presence at the moment. Looking at the other comments about branding, we are either all very "English" and are uncomfortable with the concept of branding ourselves or we go all out for it and have a very strong personality!
As you can probably gather, I didn't plan my blog but I quite like my black background and white lettering. I think the 1980's goth punk is coming out in me with the days of black clothes, dry ice and Sisters of Mercy. I scarily saw an advert for a 30th anniversary gig for Sisters of Mercy recently and felt very old. I would like to add some images, particularly try and find one that I could use consistently, but have not yet worked out how to do this.
I like the idea of bringing together the professional and personal. I think I'm getting more comfortable in blogging about things in general and not just work so I think I would continue to do that. I like how some blogs list the books they are currently reading or music they are currently listening to. In my case - Barbara Kingsolver - The lacuna and Portishead - Third.
According to google, I'm a farmer's wife, an actress (apparently one of my films is called Naughty Marietta), I'm dead and there's an online orbituary telling the world how kind and unselfish I was, I'm a hairdresser/beauty therapist, a sculptress and a sumo wrestler and can be seen in action on U-Tube! Sometimes I even put Eliza in front of my name and do abit of country singing and even appear on Jools Holland. In my spare time, I'm a Librarian and appear on page 14 with a conference report for CILIP Libraries Change Lives 2010.
Wednesday 29 June 2011
Will I ever finish Thing 2?
I think I'm getting the hang of this blogging lark. I've manage to tart up my blog, it couldn't have been more basic before if I had tried. Now would like to try and experiment with images. I'm attempting to follow 3 blogs from the voluntary sector list on Delicious. They are all novices like myself so I'm interested to see if they encounter the same problems as me. I've also been sorting out my profile a bit more. I would like to get to Thing 3 by the weekend! Is it just me being impatient or the bloggers.com site is really this slow and crashes an awful lot? I'm also finding it hard to get on the computer in the evenings, particularly since my son has discovered www.noisygames.com and www.raceonlinegames.com though I've managed to get on early tonight and I've been too absorbed to realise that my son has put himself to bed (probably in disgust that roles have been reversed). I wondered why it had gone quiet downstairs!
Tuesday 28 June 2011
Thing 2 continued!
I've now managed to post a comment. I found the blog with the useful tip - leave the box unticked for stay signed in on the google signing in page. I'm going to now try and send some more comments, follow a few blogs, sort out my profile and have a go at making my blog more attractive.
CPD23 - Thing 2
I've survived the first hurdle, managed to complete my first blog and see it successfully registered and on the delicious bookmarks. Managed to pick out a few blogs to read including some voluntary sector ones but everything went downhill when I tried to comment on one. Just kept going round and kept ending back to the log in page for bloggers.com. I think I did see someone comment that they had problems leaving comments on someone else's blog because of a bug with google mail and blogger.com. I wish I paid more attention at the time when I read the blog! I'll have to see if I can remember whose blog it was and how they got round this problem.
Sunday 26 June 2011
23 things for professional development
I'm currently in my second year of revalidation and any chance to take part in any type of professional development must be a good thing, especially that it's free! It's also a chance to share my experience and knowledge with other librarians.
I've very limited experience with social media. I did the web 2.0 course a few years ago but then didn't have any opportunities to use it so it's all very vague. The only evidence that I did this course was when I went to set up my google account, I had one set up already! I had a minor panic when I decided to look at other blogs to see what everybody else had written that they all seemed very competent and very literate and then when I went back to continue with my ramblings, my blog had disappeared. I'm also had fun with updating up my profile which doesn't want to save that I work in the non-profitable sector in the uk. It keeps changing back to non-specified. I'll have to have another fiddle with this later, no doubt I'll be wanting to experiment with this and the template as I get more confident with blogging. I'm just getting used to the basics of blogging - logging on and off, editing etc
I'm happily listening to 6 Music Glastonbury Highlights - been some of those plus some low lights as well! I'm going to attempt to publish this and register myself and then cook some dinner - Spinach and feta cheese pie, potato pilav and cabbage and tomatoes - Middle eastern style.
I've very limited experience with social media. I did the web 2.0 course a few years ago but then didn't have any opportunities to use it so it's all very vague. The only evidence that I did this course was when I went to set up my google account, I had one set up already! I had a minor panic when I decided to look at other blogs to see what everybody else had written that they all seemed very competent and very literate and then when I went back to continue with my ramblings, my blog had disappeared. I'm also had fun with updating up my profile which doesn't want to save that I work in the non-profitable sector in the uk. It keeps changing back to non-specified. I'll have to have another fiddle with this later, no doubt I'll be wanting to experiment with this and the template as I get more confident with blogging. I'm just getting used to the basics of blogging - logging on and off, editing etc
I'm happily listening to 6 Music Glastonbury Highlights - been some of those plus some low lights as well! I'm going to attempt to publish this and register myself and then cook some dinner - Spinach and feta cheese pie, potato pilav and cabbage and tomatoes - Middle eastern style.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)